Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/413

Rh were spread far beyond the limits of Sweden, and were translated into many foreign tongues. Her special field was to describe every-day life, as she did in her first book, and those of her works which have this for their exclusive purpose are very excellent. In this class we may mention "Presidentens döttrar" and "Grannarne." But in her later works there are found things which decidedly weaken the poetic effect. In her father's house she had suffered much because she was not like the others, and because she would not accommodate herself to the forms which society imperiously demanded of women. Thus was ripened in her mind the idea of the rights of women to be on the same level with men, and in her later novels she advocates the cause of woman. Religious and philanthropical questions were also discussed in her novels, and this was likewise a detriment to them. When we except her books of travel, "Hemmen i nya verlden" (Homes in the New World) and "Lifvet i gamla verlden" (Life in the Old World)), most of her later works, "Syskonlif", "Hertha," etc., rank far below her earlier works in freshness and poetic charm.

While Fredrika Bremer describes the life of the middle classes, (1797-1848) finds the materials for her stories among the higher classes of society. She had a keen eye for their follies and frivolities, but she lacked that discrimination and that vein of satire, which alone could have given her descriptions the highest and permanent value. Her novels are vivid and graceful, but they lack naïve simplicity and frankness, by which Bredrika Bremer makes her sketches so charming. Among her most remarkable works are "Kusinerna," "Axel," "Ståndsparalleler" and "Torparen och hans omgifning," in the last of which she has abandoned her special sphere and